Why is the Mass called a celebration?

We human beings always celebrate when we have something to honour and remember with fondness.  Birthdays, graduations, weddings, baptisms and New Year’s Day are all events that we commonly celebrate.  They are occasions, and we gather.  There is joy in the air and a sense of festivity stems from our hearts. 

 

But in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Eucharist every day, and every Sunday is a mandatory communal celebration of the Mass.  Missing one Mass on Sunday with no good reason is deemed not just a sin, but a mortal one, causing one to lose one’s state of grace, and requiring that catholic to head straight to the confessional, confess his sin, and be absolved of his error by the priest confessor, so that with his soul restored to the pristine state of grace, he can go up to the sanctuary at the next Mass, and receive the wonderful gift of Holy Communion.  Otherwise, if he still receives the Eucharist without the needed absolution of the priest, he will be adding yet another mortal sin to his soul.

 

But I am quite certain that the majority of Catholics have either forgotten this important catechesis, or have chosen to ignore this teaching of the Church, and this is indeed a travesty.  Each time I instruct the penitent about this in the confessional, I get a stunned look from the penitent, as if I am talking about some nonsense or fabrication that I made up.  And one of the reasons why children of catholic parents do not make confession a regular practice in their lives is principally because they hardly see their own parents making it sedulously in their faith life. 

 

Each time the Eucharist is celebrated, in the presence of the community is the gathering of the society of the baptized.  The Eucharist is a family meal, a time of bonding, much like the family dinner table, where each member of the family sits and enjoys the meal where each person sits shoulder to shoulder and it is a reminder that where one family is absent from the table, the family is lacking in its unity. 

 

 Before making Eve from the rib of Adam, God had in inkling that it was not good for man to be alone.  In the realm of nature, there is no singular aloneness in existence.  Down to the smallest molecule or atom, there is a relationship in everything.  Even a man or a woman is never alone.  Each human being is a composite make up of so many cells and organs.  Everything is meant to be in relationship, and the Eucharist is no different.

 

Look at the way families gather on a regular basis.  Whether there is an occasion or not, whether they are in a good or a bad mood, families will come together regularly and put aside their own individual preferences or tedium.  They recognize that family togetherness is about sharing, and their physical presence resets the mind to the fact that their bonding as a family is what makes like meaningful and beautiful.  If that is true for family life, it is also just as true for the Eucharist.

 

I wonder if it is because there is little emphasis on the word “celebration” by preachers at the ambo, that this sense of the importance of the weekly gathering is hardly appreciated by the congregation.  There needs to be a dynamic reinstallation of the deep meaning of celebration so that we as a congregation never lose the importance of a regular and weekly coming together in the church for the Mass. 

 

It is my hope that every person who reads this reflection will have a fresh appreciation for every Eucharistic celebration from now on. 

Everyone has a story. Realizing this changes so much for us.

 I just returned from a short vacation that I was blessed to have, and it was to a place halfway across the world from tiny Singapore.  I went to Seattle in North America, and the journey there had me endure a grueling passage of 14.5 hours in a stable and well provided for aircraft.  Of course, I was not the only passenger in the plane.  Together with me were about 350 other people. 

 

As I sat in my seat and gazed at the other passengers who were en route to Seattle with me, I came to realize that every single one of those passengers had their own reason why they were making this trip.  None of us was there just by chance.  It came to me that not just on a plane, but in every place, we find ourselves in, the people around us all have their story.  Sometimes, when we aren’t conscious of this fact, we can end up dismissing or writing off the strangers around us as unimportant or trivial.  The truth is that God who knows and sees everything is aware of the state of the lives of each individual that stand, sit or walk before our very eyes. 

 

If we view the lives of others as unimportant or trivial, it cannot be that it is only our own lives is important and significant.  In the same way that the lives of others around us is as important to God as our own lives, we then ought to show the proper and adequate respect, reverence and esteem to them, not just for their sakes, but for our own sake. 

 

None of us deserves to have strangers we do not know to sit us down and give us a detailed and particular explanation of their lives and how they came to be at the time and place that we see them.  That would be too much for anyone. 

 

Yesterday afternoon, after having had lunch with my family at my brother’s home, I was driving back to my residence at the seminary when at a traffic junction, I saw in front of me an elderly man, almost bent double, very slowly pushing a loaded cart of things across the road, and a young and more spritely man walked slowly next to him and helped him to push the cart as the elderly man slowly made his way across the road with his mincing gait.  I told myself that this man must have a story about why he was so physically challenged with his body so physically challenged and why he was pushing a cartload of things across a busy road on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon all by himself.  I peered outside of my window and tried to see whether the other drivers in the other cars at the traffic junction looked at the man with the same quizzical concern, but apparently, I was the only one who was looking at the poor man with concern. 

 

All of us need to have an awakening of this sort to truly be ready for the second coming of Jesus Christ.  It’s not just self-awareness that is so crucial, it is the awareness of the lives of others in the world that makes us truly ready and worthy to welcome the second coming of Jesus at the second judgment. 

 

It’s the same at every line waiting for their turn to enter the confessional at a church.  The line of penitents has the same phenomenon.  Each penitent has their own individual sins that he or she is struggling with in life.  In my experience as a confessor priest, I have never at one time heard the same sins from my penitents.  The fact is that they are so varied and individual.  Each one had a reason to be in that confession line at that day.  I am sure that it was this kind of awareness that struck the Cure of Ars that caused him to devote so many hours each day to be a patient and loving confessor to the many who turned up each day to have their sins heard and given the precious and life-saving absolution for their sins.  I think the real problem so many priests are loathe to sit for long periods of time in the confessional is because we may be thinking only of ourselves and our inconvenience, than the need and ache in the penitents to have their sins forgiven after an honest and heart-rending confession. 

 

The truth is that we are all connected in a very hidden and varied way.  God knows this, and I am sure that he would want us to realize this as well, and it is this knowledge and awareness that will make the world a smaller and more peaceable place. 

 

May God lift the veil that covers so much of our sight, and may we then all be truly ready for the second coming of Christ. 

We cannot just base our love on feelings or sentiments if we want it to last.

 One of the least appreciated and understood aspects of love is that when it is true and persistent, it cannot be simply based on our feelings and emotions.  Instead, it has to be based on a decision to love, and not on the emotions or feelings of romance and bliss. 

 

And one of the downsides of this very unappreciated definition of love is that for many, if not most people, once they no longer feel the sentiments and emotions of romance anymore, they stop loving altogether.  Rather, they hope and pray for the return of those feelings that led them to make the decision to marry in Church, before a minister ordained to receive their wedding vows in the presence of their friends and relatives on the day that they got married. 

 

This is one of the most fundamental things about true and life-giving love that I try my hardest to impart in preparing couples for their marriage before me in the church.  I don’t ‘diss’ or ignore the fact that in their pre-marriage courtship, that they are experiencing the stirrings and uplifting moments of romance and being ‘in-love’.  What needs to be reminded is that these experiences are not the kernel and essence of what is life-giving.  These may be nice and exhilarating to experience, but for most people truly in love, just to live for these moments is akin to living in a dream-like existence. 

 

As some spiritual gurus have written and maintained, our hearts and minds are complex and promiscuous, quite like wild horses frolicking to their own tunes, with love frequently not on their agenda.  I am certain that imparting this to people who are madly and dizzyingly in love, can be quite disturbing and even an affront to them.  But I need to find new and creative ways to impart this truth to them so that they will be prepared to face it well when the time comes in their married life, to hang on to the dream they have of living their marriage in the best way possible.

 

It’s the same for our prayer life.  It can’t be that I was unfortunate to have bad or insufficiently prepared catechists in my days of spiritual formation in my pre-confirmation days of my teens.  And if it was implied by my catechists, it was most probably done with such speed and little emphasis that we were not caught off-guard and given the opportunity to seriously think about what was being implied.  What do we do about our prayer lives when we no longer feel like praying?  After all, most, if not all of us are often tired, bored, no longer wanting to pray, and are just jaded with prayer.  If I am in the ministry of catechesis, I would want to focus a large part of my syllabus to teach my students what real prayer is, and how to handle it when we no longer feel any desire to pray. 

 

Just like love, prayer too, is a decision.  It’s not a mere emotion or sentiment.  If love is just an emotion, one will find one’s world turned upside down when there are no longer any familiar emotions or sentiments in one’s love relationship.  But if one is well taught and catechized, one will appreciate that it’s ok if the familiar stirrings of the heart are no longer there.  And that’s because one has learned to base one’s love on the decision to love, and not just on the fleeting feelings or sentiments of love. 

 

When our prayer life is based on the decision to pray, one will not find oneself shaken and lost when those familiar feelings are no longer there. 

 

God, who is love itself, is a being whose love is a decision.  That makes God’s love ever present and real, because God’s love is not emotion-based.  We only need to look seriously at a crucifix to realize this.  On the cross of Calvary, Jesus didn’t base his being crucified so cruelly and inhumanely on his emotions.  He willingly allowed his hands and feet to be nailed because of his decision to love all of sinful humanity.  Just looking at a cross without a corpus on it doesn’t give us the all-important lesson of this.  A plain cross with no body on it doesn’t impart that love is not a feeling, and that real love is rather a decision.

 

The monks in a monastery have something that is taught and imparted using something as simple as a bell or a gong.  The striking of this gong about seven times a day helps the monks to sustain their prayer not just on feelings and sentiments.  Monks in these monasteries pray together ritually each time the bell rings or the gong is struck.  They ritually pray their offices and celebrate Mass together.  Monks are not robots.  They are humans, and the founders or their order or society have wisely chosen to teach the monks that a faithful and regular prayer life is not one that is just based on enthusiasm or sentiments.  Throughout the monastery, whether the monk is on the library or the kitchen, when they hear to bell ring, everything stops and their Divine Office books are opened and their will is being reminded to pray. 

 

As Fr Rolheiser has said it so well, this regularity reminds each monk that time is not their time, but God’s time.  And if their time is God’s time, then their lives are God’s life as well. 

 

My being posted to the Office of Catechesis has something that is similar to the discipline of the monasteries.  Every day, at the precise moment of 12pm, every person in the building of the Catholic Archdiocese Education Centre come out of our offices and gather at the parapet of the building overlooking the ground floor and we pray the Angelus together, ending with a blessing bestowed by any priest who is there at that time.  It’s not because we feel like doing it.  It’s a reminder that prayer, like divine love, is something that is based on a decision.  The purer that decision is, the purer the love will be.

 

May we all learn from Michael Leach, who has taught that falling in love is the easy part; learning to love is the hard part, and living in love is the best part.  If this is true of love, it is so true for prayer as well. 

 

 

 

 

Do we really want to die a happy death? Is this ever on our must-do list in life?

 Ever since I was a seminarian, aspiring to be an ordained priest in the Holy Catholic Church, I was given to be yearning to die a happy death at the end of my earthly existence.  Though we were never really formally instructed what it was to die a happy death, it was something that we nurtured in our hearts as we prepared, albeit sedulously, for the ordination to the priesthood that awaited us as we lived through the seemingly endless days in the 7 years of seminary formation. 

 

This was something that was brought so clearly to my consciousness when I was given the confirmation that I was suffering from the debilitating cancer of leukemia, and that of a very rare form, which was acute lymphocytic leukemia, which if not treated, would probably be fatal within a few months.

 

Of course, this news couldn’t be given to me at a worse time.  I was at that time in the beginning stages of studying for my License in Dogmatic Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC.  This meant that I had to stop my pursuit of the degree because I had to focus squarely on my search for a suitable bone marrow donor whose HLA (human leukocyte antigen) typing matches mine. 

 

I will never forget how I reacted when my doctor revealed to me that I was now a patient suffering from a very serious form of cancer.  I smiled quietly, and whispered a prayer of grateful thanks to God for having given me this cross to carry.  I was never angry or resentful for the leukemia, and took full-on the arduous search for a matching HLA donor for my bone marrow transplant. 

 

I would surmise that at that point in my spiritual life, I was completely ready for death.  Of course, thoughts of how my family and loved ones would take the news of my imminent death came to mind, but they did not dampen my positive attitude toward my death.

 

In many of my spiritual readings from renown spiritual authors, I was always aware of the fact that we should never live our lives in ways that will make us die a sad or tragic death.  To be able to die a truly happy death, we need to be striving always to be in a state of grace, and not subject ourselves to unhealthy habits or addictions, and not to live in morally unscrupulous or illicit ways.  Like St Francis of Assisi, we ought to be able to see death as a sister, and welcome her when she made her presence known to us. 

 

To be ready for Sister Death is not to be overly remorse and downcast in life.  In short, it means that we are cognizant that this earthly life is not the be all and end all for everyone.  It’s just a transient stage before we reach our final everlasting state, which for all souls, ought to be in the full embrace of our Heavenly Father in eternity.  This makes us not put too much emphasis in our quest for happiness in this life, which for many, will include having large stores of wealth and a name known and loved by as many people as we can.  It’s the lifelong quest for fame, fortune and reputation. 

 

To be truthful, this is not the reason I went into the seminary to study for the priesthood.  No priest would want to be a priest in order to become rich and famous.  But as the years of the seminary formation passed, as we edged towards the coveted ordination date, we became clearer and clearer that the joys of the priesthood had to free us from the quest for riches, wealth and fame.  That is why at our ordination Mass, we transient deacons would be seen lying prostrate on the floor before the Bishop, signifying that we are ready to die to ourselves, and do be the servants of the Bishop who was going to ordain us in a few moments. 

 

Dying to the self includes us not pursuing things only that will thrill us or bring us some high repute in the eyes of those looking at us.  It frees us from only wanting things that will make us momentarily happy and contented.  It grounds us well and keeps us stable when things in life begin to fall apart.

 

I can’t keep preaching this, because there will be a time when the laity we preach to get tired of hearing us, if we keep droning on about this.  So, I write blogs like this one just so that when readers of my blog page happen to read it, they will get their conscience poked and prodded, and ask themselves the all-important question of whether they are ready to die a happy death.

 

Things that bring a smile to our faces are manifold and plenty, but some of them only bring temporary and transient joys to our lives.  But it is only when we pursue the godly and holy joys that will make us endure the trials and afflictions that are long-term and can even cause our deaths. 

 

May all of us be truly ready to die a happy death when Sister Death comes a-visiting.